Wow. So much to say. In this post, I'll concentrate on my flight...
My flight out was an unexpected nightmare. Not so much the flight itself, but I had a mad dash around Terminal 3 in Heathrow Airport. Despite arriving over an hour before final check-in (and having done the main check-in legwork online the previous night), the queue for checking in was huge. But the worst was yet to come.
We (my dad and I) finally got to the Emirates check-in desk just on the dot of it closing (although I'm sure they'd have waited). I'd brought two suitcases, both way over my total personal baggage allowance of 20kg, but what the hell, I'm emigrating right?
The nice lady at the check-in desk weighed my first suitcase. 32kg, on the button for the maximum weight allowed in one suitcase for Dubai International. When I explained I was emigrating, she allowed it with no extra charge. Awesome.
Then she weighs in the second suitcase. 28kg. Not so bad, right? But the check-in lady said "I'm really sorry, but we'll have to charge you for the second suitcase". I said "that's fine!", thinking an extra £100 or so for extra baggage wouldn't be the end of the world.
Only it wasn't an extra £100 or so. It would have been an extra £1,000.
At this point I began to have a minor nervous breakdown. The nice lady, very sympathetic, suggested we go to a company called Excess Baggage who would be able to ship out the extra suitcase for much less than £1000. However time was running short - we might just about be able to sort this out before the departure desk closed.
Totally stressed out and not quite remembering whether the directions were right or left to get to Excess Baggage, we asked one of the airport staff who directed us to go to the far end of Terminal 3 Arrivals, some distance away from Departures where we were. So we dashed over there, only to be told by a rather unhelpful Eastern European chap working at Excess Baggage that their system wasn't working, so we'd have to go to Excess Baggage in Terminal 3 Departures, where we'd been in the first place. How amusing. Aha. Aha-ha.
In contrast to his colleague, the Indian guy at the Departures branch of Excess Baggage was completely awesome, and his calm, friendly and professional approach calmed me down too. He explained what we needed to do (weigh suitcase, fill in forms, go back to Excess Baggage Departures to have suitcase X-rayed, hand in, job done) and assured me I could still make my flight despite my fear to the contrary.
We did all the necessary stuff, then dashed back over to Departures and handed in the second suitcase (after taking out all the bloody batteries, because they wouldn't allow them).
By this point I had all of ten minutes to go through all the security procedures before getting to the departure lounge, and I was again having a mini-nervous breakdown because these things never go quickly do they? So it was another mad dash, a quick hug to my parents and no time for tearful goodbyes, through security, handluggage X-rayed, then after thinking I was done, another bloody security point where they made me take my shoes off. Ngggh.
By this point I was so short of time I was convinced I would miss my flight, so I ran as fast as I could, trainers in hand and heavy hand luggage weighing me down (I'd quickly stuffed essential stuff from suitcase #2 into it), the twenty miles or so to Gate 5 - my flight's departure lounge.
And I made it. By the skin of my teeth.
When I arrived at my seat, a rather obese Afro-Caribbean lady was sitting in it, but after a couple of attempts by two different flight crew members, she finally (begrudgingly) agreed to go to her own bloody seat, somewhere else nowhere near where she'd been sitting. Grr.
The flight itself was ok, although my seat, contrary to the seating plan I'd used to pick it, was not situated by an emergency exit - I'd picked it with the intention that my long legs could stretch out, but instead I was a little bit cramped. No big dramas, but the teenager sitting to my left was also a six-footer so it wasn't ideal.
Despite their reputation for having the best customer service of all the airlines, I wasn't particularly impressed with Emirates. And trust me, I'm easy to impress (I hardly ever fly so it always seems novel and luxurious). One air hostess brusquely approached me at one point and demanded to know what I wanted (I'd accidentally pushed the "call for service" button, although it wasn't at all obvious that's what it was!). When I asked for a glass of water, she thrust a small plastic container of water into my hand and more or less stormed off. Hmmm.
Anyway, the flight was only slightly delayed, and I arrived on time. Yay.
